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 A 2-year survey of over one thousand consumers in four countries was commissioned by the Spanish RAIMAT winery belonging to the Codorníu – Raventós Group with a view to understand the consumer habits and their understanding of wines. 70% of people surveyed said they liked to taste new wines, but for the majority, choosing them is no easy matter.
First of all, due to lack of knowledge: 65% of the population admit that they know little or nothing about wines, and that’s why 9 out of 10 prefer to be given advice. What’s more, 44% do not know how to describe what wines they like.
Secondly, due to lack of information- for 7 out of 10 the bottle label doesn’t feature enough information in order to make the right choice. Hence, over half the population of the survey (54%) confessed that they were foxed when it came to choosing a new wine. 6 out of 10 respondents said they didn’t know how to choose a wine to go with the food they were going to eat. Furthermore, a shocking three fourths (over 73%) considered that the world of wine is made for experts.
All the data from the survey suggests that people often don’t understand the language on the labels or the sommeliers’ technical jargon. So, how do they choose? 44% go by the Appellation of Origin and 21% go by the price. Other important criteria are the brand and the grape varietal (10%).
According to Elisabeth Figueras, the head winemaker at RAIMAT, “there is evidently a big gap between wineries and consumers. Consumers find it hard to understand the world of wine in general, its language, and they aren’t able to know what they are going to find in the glass. So it’s no use making better and better wines if we don’t manage to explain them and help the people who buy them to understand them and enjoy them”.
According to Javier Pagés, CEO of the Codorníu Raventós Group “the consumer gets lost and it is only from an estate and a winery such as Raimat, a flagship in the sector, that a groundbreaking initiative can be launched, which aims to take the brakes off consumers”
Categorizing by Intensity
The RAIMAT winery has decided to reinvent the way we understand and choose a wine by placing its relation with consumers at the centre of the value chain. The innovative winery claims to be in the process of revolutionising the category in order to simplify the world of wine which for many is still too complex.
For the first time in history the winery has classified all its labels based on their INTENSITY. The aim is to help people make the right choice of wine and to identify their own tastes and the most appropriate food matches.
Making it easier to choose and right
The new conception of the brand envisages identification of all their 12 wines with a number from 1-10; 1 is for the lightest and 10 for the wine with the most intense mouthfeel. But, how do they define intensity? At RAIMAT intensity depends on the varietal and the winemaking method and it is described as a combination of:
· Organoleptic properties- freshness, colour, flavour and aroma
· Body- volume, depth and length
· Aging- number of months in barrels
For each wine the winemakers assess these elements and have thus come up with a number that identifies its intensity. The wines have been classified in two different sections- one for rosés and reds, and another one for whites.
RAIMAT is a 100+ year-old winery founded in 1914 when Manuel Raventós i Doménech, the owner of Codorníu, bought arid and barren lands in Lleida (Spain) and turned them into what is today the largest vineyard in Europe owned by a single family. In a unique setting, with pure water from the melting snow of the Pyrenees, RAIMAT stands today with 100% of its vineyards certified as sustainable by the CCPI and a part of them as organic. In 3 years it plans to obtain organic production certification. It is a state of the art winery with all the 2,245 hectares classified into individual vine plots that are treated separately in accordance with their specific characteristics. |